


If Only to Smile

by orphan_account



Series: Avengers - High School [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Carnival, Child Abuse, Deaf Clint Barton, If there's something you're triggered by it's in this, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Rape, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 11:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17182205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A sort of prequel to my High School Fic can be read as a standalone.Clint Barton's life has not been easy.Warning: If there's something your triggered by, it's in this.





	If Only to Smile

\----  
Warning: If there’s something that triggers you, this work definitely has it. Read at your own caution. 

Clint is just a few weeks over one years old when his father comes home; drunk and furious, fists flying and eyes wild and inhumane. His mother is at the store and Barney’s having a playdate so there’s nobody to protect him.

The full blunt of Gary Barton’s rage is upon him and he cries and cries. He yells for Barney and calls for mama but nobody comes. He wants it to end and it seems every blow becomes more and more powerful. A flurry of fists and Clint thinks he might die. 

Why is his father doing this? Mama always says that daddy loves Clint and Barney. 

When Clint is one, he realizes that people lie.

\---

Clint is three years old when Harry Tucker invites him over. Harry’s four and a big boy, mama says he needs to behave and daddy is laying on the couch with one of his bottles. Barney reminds him not to tell anyone about daddy, Clint asks why like he always does but Barney just scowls and hits him lightly over the head with a newspaper.

Clint goes to Harry’s house and everything seems different. The walls and floors are clean and Mrs. Tucker smiles a lot. Harry has a little sister who plays with dolls and a golden retriever named Betsy likes to follow him around. When Mr. Tucker comes home nothing changes and Harry and his mama go and hug him and he kisses their foreheads. 

The Tuckers ask if he wants to stay for dinner and Clint knows that daddy wants him back before it gets dark but he just wants to spend a little more time with these people. 

Barney always tells him that being happy is an illusion but Clint doesn’t know what that means. He thinks he must be having an illusion though because when he’s at the Tuckers he feels happiness.

After dinner Mr. Tucker smiles at him and says he’s a good chap and Mrs. Tucker asks if he needs a ride home. Clint smiles and shakes his head because he knows daddy will be really mad if he told them where he lives.

Clint goes home and his father pounds his head into the floor for being so late. His ears ring and everybody sounds funny for months.

Mama takes him to a Doctor one day and afterwards she tells him that he’s messed up for life and she’s ashamed he’s her son. After mama leaves for the car, Clint looks at the test results she’s left behind and tries to read them. He doesn’t know what “70 percent deaf” means but he knows it’s made everyone upset.

He can’t hear anyone, including himself so he stops talking.

Clint is three when he goes mute.

\---

Clint is four when his daddy drags him, mama and Barney into the car and drives into town for more of his stuff that comes in glass bottles. Clint hates that stuff and he rubs his arm after he’s thrown into the car.

Barney tries to talk to him but he can’t pick up what he’s saying so Clint ignores him. He notices that daddy is driving funny and watches detachedly as mama yells at him, he can hear some of what she says but only because it’s loud. The world is muffled but Clint doesn’t care anymore.

He does hear mama scream though, it’s loud and unnerving to Clint’s quiet world. It’s enough to make him look up as daddy bulldozes right into a silver truck. Clint is rammed forward and for the first time in a year a noise comes out of his throat, a shriek right before he hits his head.

When Clint comes to he smells blood. His head is pounding and opening his eyes hurts, he opens them anyway because pain is no stranger. The car is a wreck and glass has shattered, the vehicle is misshapen so much so that Clint can’t open his door. 

Clint feels scared and he wants to get out of the place that smells like blood. He feels a pressure on his arm and turns to look at it and screams when he sees Barney’s limp and lifeless figure. 

He taps his older brother frantically and tries to get him to wake up. There is blood in Barney’s hair and his face is white, glass has shattered from his window and protruding from his face. His mother’s chair is squashed around Barney’s right leg so that Clint can’t see the bottom half, but he does see the blood steadily coming from under it. 

Clint looks at his mother's chair and throws up when he sees her head has been ripped three-quarters off of her neck. She’s covered in blood and her blue eyes are glossed over and looking up, a permanent cry of pain etched on her face.

He can’t bear to look at his father and he cries and throws up because he’s scared and he’s surrounded by the dead and he feels like he can’t breath. He cries until there are no more tears left to shed and he unbuckles his seatbelt and reaches over Barney to try and crawl through his shattered window. He jarrs his brother’s leg and Barney awakes from unconsciousness with a scream, Clint’s voice is raw and he can’t believe it - Barney is alive.

Then out of nowhere somebody in a blue and yellow jacket with a radio attached to their shirt peaks in though Barney’s window and their mouth begins to move and their eyes widen when they take in the scene before them.

The paramedic helps Clint out of the car first and Clint is enveloped in a world of blue and red flashing lights. Somebody puts an orange blanket over him and shines a flashlight in his eyes, tries to talk to him.

Clint remains silent though, the person with the flashlight seems worried and tries to talk again but all he cares about is Barney. Is Barney going to be alright?

Clint flinches when he feels a hand on his shoulder and turns around, his guard on to see the same person looking even more concerned. The person, a black haired woman taps her ear and asks a question he can’t hear.

He thinks he knows what she means though and nodded his head. 

The woman gets up and Clint is alone for a minute. He panics, he can’t be alone, but he is alone. His parents or at least his mother are surely dead and Barney was probably going to die too. He wonders what was going to happen to him and he finds himself hugging his knees to his chest.

He feels his throat release a sob and he rocks back and forth, beginning slowly but becoming more frantic with every rock; and then he’s bawling and the lady with the black hair is back. She puts whatever it is she is holding down and sits next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

Clint relaxes into her touch naturally and cries more as she runs a hand through his hair soothingly.

Clint is four years old when he is orphaned.

\---

Clint is 4 and recovering fast. Barney is alive and so is he, he’s been given little gadgets called hearing aids and suddenly he can hear again. It’s an explosion of noise and it’s painful at first but slowly he gets used to it. The nurses have begun to teach him letters and numbers and he couldn’t be more interested.

The world seems a new place and full of possibility and he even starts to talk again. Barney is happier too but he keeps talking and warning Clint about ‘foster care’. He doesn’t know what that is though so wraps himself up in recovering, being cheerful and throwing himself into learning. By the time Barney’s finished physical therapy for his leg, Clint is reading superhero comics.

And then one day a man in a suit comes in and says that he’s taking Clint and Barney away. Clint doesn’t want to go but the way the man talks scares him so he doesn’t say anything. 

Clint and Barney are introduced to a married couple who call themselves Joseph and Gabriella Grettings. They seem nice to Clint but Barney calls them slippery foxes, they don’t look slippery or fox-like to Clint but Barney was almost always right so he keeps his eye on them in case they grow tails.

They go home with the Grettings and Clint talks to Gabriella about his favorite comics and chatters about dinosaurs and superheroes. The man in a suit is sitting in the back with Barney and Barney stays silent and glares at the CPS agent.

The suit man makes sure that Clint and Barney are ‘settled in’ before he leaves the Grettings house and Clint waves goodbye out of good nature.

After the man leaves Clint decides to ask Gabriella if she wants to play a game with him but when he finds her and asks she slaps him across the face and tells him to go entertain himself or he won’t get supper.

Clint is almost five when he learns that being an optimist will kill you.

\---

Clint is 9 and in his twelfth foster home. He’s pretty sure this one is the worst and he has been in crapholes gallore. He’s had to sleep in an attic filled with rats, been thrown in a basement where he found actual human bones and almost been ‘accidentally’ buried alive by a foster sibling. 

If him and Barney aren’t home by 3:45 they’ll be whipped and beaten. If they’re late for school or get bad grades than they’ll go without food for two days. The whisper of detention meant a fork stabbed into a hand during dinner. Drugs? They’ll try to kill you, ask Barney.

Worst are the weekends when their foster parents ‘friends’ are over. They love Clint and Barney; they’ll throw darts at them for fun. Clint’s had to shove too many away from him or his brother because one of the ‘friends’ wants to ‘fuck you till you scream’. So far they hadn’t had the chance with Clint, as for Barney he’s figured out another way to appease them. Barney will have them watch as he cut himself and let them carve their names into his skin.

It makes Clint sick and he can’t believe they’ve been here for six months. It’s a hellhole and he’s talked to his CPS agent multiple times. He’s even picked up the habit of smoking at this home, it’s an escape from everything. He didn’t fucking care if it’d kill him and he typically went through half a pack a day.

His teachers smell the smoke and seem to hate him for it, his health teacher treats him like shit and other kids thought it’d be funny to push him around. 

Clint isn’t a pushover anymore though and those fuckers had it coming to them when he knocked their teeth out. He doesn’t pay attention in school and anything he felt for the education system has turned sour, learning doesn’t have an appeal like it used to.

Barney has knocked him right of comic books and all Clint does in his spare time is smoke and watch TV. 

Finally he’s had enough and he’s done with the system. He tells Barney that he’s leaving and he can come if he likes but he doesn’t give a shit. Clint really does care if Barney comes but he’s been through too much to let that shine through.

They leave their twelfth home on Barney’s thirteenth birthday and Clint spray paints ‘Fuck You’ on the side of the house just for the hell of it.

They hitchhike to get as far away as possible, leaving a car only when bodily harm is threatened or the guy in the van does something shitty. It’s been almost a month of nonstop traveling and Barney and Clint are more worn out than before but their safer even in strangers’ trucks.

One day when Clint and Barney are in a small town, somewhere in Louisiana Clint thinks, Barney finds a poster. He points at it for Clint to see and Clint reads it as he lights a cigarette. 

“Carson’s Carnival of Traveling Wonders” he mutters before turning to Barney,”How the hell is that supposed to help us?”.

Barney rolls his eyes,”Well all we’ve been doing is traveling, this place does that. Plus they provide housing probably and food and pay, plus it’s a fucking carnival and when you were younger you always talked about wanting to join one of those.”

Clint asks him sarcastically if he really wants to sleep in the same room as a clown. He’s surprised when Barney responds that he would, who cares if he wanted to.

Clint finds himself coming around to it, some childlike piece of him wondering if he’d learn to juggle or ride a unicycle or if there were elephants or lions. The next day when Barney asks him, mimicking Clint’s own phrasing for a similar situation,”I’m leaving, you can come if you like but I don’t give a shit.” Clint already has an answer and says without hesitation that he will.

Him and Barney find the address on the poster, hope they’re still there and set out to join the carnival.

They find it within hours and Barney seems to know what to do immediately. They stride right into the ringmaster’s personal tent, two boys with nothing to lose.

Carson is sitting in a desk already and seems unsurprised when the two burst in, he sighs and takes off reading glasses and puts down a document he was reading,”What’s wrong folks? Did a cotton candy machine break again?”

“No.” Barney says curtly,”We’re here with a proposition.”

Carson’s eyebrows raise and his expression says that he isn’t really taking them seriously at all. Barney can tell as well as Clint and says that the man should take them seriously.

“Give us jobs.” Clint interjects, Barney isn’t getting to the point, he’s not gonna waste his time,”Give us jobs, we’ll do anything. Scoop fucking elephant poop if that’s what it takes. All we want it return is food, water, housing and pay - we don’t care how much or how little money wise.”

Barney glares at him and Clint can already hear him saying that he’s oldest and he can handle it and Clint is nine and blah, blah, blah.

Carson doesn’t ask why but does say that he wants them here at six AM tomorrow and don’t be late or they’d pack up and leave without them.

Clint is nine when he gets a job, possibly to scoop elephant shit.

\---

Clint is ten and isn’t scooping elephant poop. That’s Barney’s job, that and going on coffee runs. Clint is shooting a bow and arrow, he has a natural talent apparently and is being trained by two of the best, Swordsman and Trickster. Everytime he misses a bullseye they slap him over the head. Every time he scores perfectly (99% of the time) they leave him be. 

Twelve hours of archery every day non-stop. The lead acrobat tries to help him schooling wise during his downtime but Clint would much rather be sleeping or talking to Barney. 

Besides there is way too much material to get through, if he has proper school hours on top of archery he’d only have six hours to eat, sleep and wash up as well as do what he wants to. He isn't making that sacrifice.

Him and Trickshot have begun performing together during live shows and he goes by Hawkeye. Barney scowls and moans about about his workload. Clint likes being on stage but finds the costume a bit much and Barney’s complaining is like hell. 

Plus one of Swordsmans’ rules is no smoking so he’s dying.

Barney’s complaints may be annoying but they’re also well founded, Clint knows. He himself never complains but instead tries to help take some of Barney’s workload off.

He often, on breaks, helps Barney prepare props or feed a few seals before returning to archery. While Clint is banned from smoking, Barney is now openly doing it, he hadn’t before so he recently started.

Barney has also begun light-drinking, it worries Clint because he knows alcoholism and addiction runs in their family so is wary of Barney one day becoming a Gary Barton 2.0.

He has no control over anything, not even his own habits.

Clint’s ten and slowly falling apart.

\---

Clint’s twelve and he’s pretty sure he’s the best marksman in the world. He’s not just Hawkeye anymore, he’s the AMAZING Hawkeye. He doesn’t think he’s very amazing and loathes performing more with every performance but nobody cares about his opinion. 

He has nightmares every night. Barney has begun avoiding him and Clint hasn’t talked to him in almost a week, not a word. His hearing aids broke three weeks ago after Swordsman hit him so hard they flew out and into a bucket of water. He can’t hear again and it’s brought back memories like his mother’s decapitation and Harry Tucker’s family; on an off day he wonders what that family is doing and if they knew what happened to Barney and him. Carson buys him new aids and delivers them, they work even better than the ones before.

Clint thanks him and promises to repay him despite the man saying it's the least he can do.

There has been an odd feeling floating about. Everybody seems off and Clint feele off, and Trickster and Barney feel off and even Carson feels off.

One day after a nightmare, Clint decides to do some late night archery so wanders into the props tent. He hears voices though the canvas and decides to lay low and listen.

“...Carson hasn’t been giving us our full share, whaddya say we take it for ourselves?” somebody exclaims from inside the tent.

Clint frowns at the conversation going on, he thinks he knows what's going on and he won’t stand for Carson to be stolen from. The man gives more than fair wages, Barney was earning twenty bucks an hour and he was the one paid the least. 

Clint creeps into the tent and thinks about the repayment he told Carson he’d give. Could this be it? Frowning, Clint tries to establish who all is in the group.

His frown deepens when he recognizes Trickshot, Swordsman, all four clowns and Brian the strongman. He feels his heart stop when he recognizes Barney amongst them, Barney of all people. Carson had given them hope when they desperately needed it and while Clint and Barney got some crappy treatment Carson did his best and made sure things never got out of hand. Besides, the Barton brothers had always been dealt a bad hand, doing this was just going to worsen things.

Clint can’t understand his brothers motives and in a moment of blindness comes out from his hiding spot and asks the group what the hell they think they are doing.

Without any hesitation or explanation, Barney walks right up to Clint, looks him in the eye and pulls a blade out of nowhere before plunging it into Clint’s chest.

Clint looks up from the blade in shock and stares into Barney’s eyes. They are cold and unforgiving, they know who Clint is they just couldn’t care less. The other carnies do nothing as Clint collapses to the floor, simply grab something that Clint can’t see before leaving, muttering about having to get out of town before anyone finds out they stole. It’s like Clint is invisible and they don’t think anyone will care if he dies. 

Trickshot and Swordsman pass him by, Trickshot gives him one dismissive look before leaving the boy he’d spent two years of his life teaching.

There is pain everywhere and red everywhere and Clint thinks he’s dying. His mind keeps circling one thing though, Barney stabbed me. Barney betrayed me. Barney stabbed me. Barney betrayed me.

It goes on and on and Clint just can’t believe it, he’s in shellshock and Barney’s betrayal seems to hurt so much more than this knife in his chest. While the knife is hot pain that just seeps everywhere, the knowledge of Barney’s betrayal is like a cold icicle that makes calculated shots at the places where it hurts the most; mainly his heart.

Barney stabbed me. Barney betrayed me. Barney stabbed me. Barney betrayed me. Barney is going to kill me.

Clint is twelve when his brother stabs him.

\---

Clint is twelve and in a hospital, Carson had found him in the tent bleeding out and dying.

While the wound in his chest has healed, the pain in his heart is still there and constant. Two phrases echo in his head nonstop Barney betrayed me. Barney is gone. Clint wants to shoot something, smoke something and hit something.

Carson’s carnival has moved on without him, too bankrupt to wait for a twelve year old boy. Clint truly has nobody, his parents are dead, his brother has betrayed him and left him for dead.

For the first time he is really alone and he just can’t do it. He gets out of the hospital a week later and stays on the sides of the street, stealing food when hungry and jumping in the lake when dirty. He nicks a few darts from a nearby bar and throws them at targets he draws on alleyway walls in chalk.

Clint accidentally cuts himself on a dart when throwing it and watches, fascinated as crimson seeps from the injury. Blood is interesting and seems to give a release from the pain.

Soon he is cutting, little lines on his arms everyday, some become infected but Clint doesn’t mind the pain - he deserves the pain. That’s what the world has tried to show him, he’s been beaten, stabbed, groped and almost killed almost nonstop throughout his shit life and fate couldn’t be more obvious.

Everybody has left him because he is a disease, he has infected every fucking thing he touches. Everything he touches turns to complete and utter shit. He is twelve he is ‘young’ but what else does the world have to give him he wonders.

Clint is twelve years old when he slits his wrists and tries to kill himself.

\---

Clint is a week away from his thirteenth birthday when he wakes up with his wrists bandaged and hands chained. He wonders what the hell has happened because he’s obviously not in a hospital.

He looks around the room and tries to figure out where he is and snorts as he wonders if a kindly old woman has taken him in. 

When two large, muscled and pierced men walk into the room he isn’t really surprised. He asks them what they want and they tell him they know he’s the amazing Hawkeye and he’s going to be their new mercenary and play toy.

It’s his thirteenth birthday when Clint first kills a man. It’s a baker with a family and he’s sweet and he reminds Clint of Mr. Tucker. It’s loud and Clint doesn’t like it because they said he should use a gun for this. 

Clint can’t believe that he’s killed a man and he feels kind of faint but the new sniper is dragged back to base and he kills three more people before the week is over. Clint doesn’t try to escape, he thinks he’s meant for this because what else would a shithead like him be good for it not an assassin. Only him, Clint fucking Barton. 

He learns that the two men who saved his life are part of a gang and that he’s in San Francisco but he doesn’t really care. He reads the newspapers that show the latest deaths and he cuts himself every night. They let him do that, as well as puff on his cigarettes, so long as he doesn’t kill himself they don’t care what he does with himself.

Sometimes they drag him out of his room because, yes he has a room, it's filled with weapons and a lumpy mattress. He’s never had a room to himself before but he doesn’t care enough to be happy. They take him from his room and they beat him for fun but he doesn’t care and it never affects his ability not to miss.

He’s three weeks over thirteen when they decide to take his innocence and he screams at the new form of torture. He hates life a little more and after it’s done he curls into a ball and cries. 

After they leave him alone and he crawls back to his room he tries to break the glass of his window because he wants. It. To. Be. Over.

He can’t do this anymore and he succeeds in breaking the glass and his hand bleeds and he doesn’t care. He’s nine floors high and traffic is below him and he just wants to die but a hand pulls him back, attached to the hand is a red haired girl.

Clint is thirteen when he meets Natasha Romanoff.

\---

Clint is thirteen and thinks that Natasha has had just as hard of, if not harder a life than him. She’s the newest plaything for the gang and she’s new and pretty in a way that’s not queer. Others fuck her more often than they do him and she takes it well, scarily so. 

She shares his room and she’s usually silent but when she talks she has a russian accent. He never asks her about her past and she never asks about his. Sometimes they talk about milkshakes or books or movies or what kind of a life they thought normal people lived.

Natasha works as an assassin too, she’s hand to hand though and was sold to them by another gang. Clint asks her for lessons and he thinks she’s one of the best. Her aim is pretty good but he helps her anyways. He hasn’t tried to kill himself since she stopped him because it seems she’s given him something to live for.

One semi-friendly face every day is enough to get through everything. He’s no longer a robot everytime he kills and he feels horrible anguish for having dismissed those he’d hurt before. 

He’d grieved for them but not enough, he feels he didn’t punish himself enough and feels more guilty then he has in a long time. Natasha is sent out more often than him and is often in more danger since he is just a sniper and she is a close-up operative.

He feels worried every time she leaves on a mission and wonders if she’ll come back in one piece, more often than not though, she doesn’t have a scratch on her pale skin. She seems untouchable and unbreakable. He thinks she’s already been shattered, which is why she doesn’t seem to feel anything. Often they’re beaten in the same room and she doesn’t make a sound.

For the first time, Clint begins plotting for escape.

It’s not for him, it’s for Natasha. He doesn’t know why she’s given him awareness and unmuted him from what’s going on, but he doesn’t really care. He thinks she’s saved him, and he’s going to save her.

One day they’re talking about states and both of them are trying to name all of the US ones. Clint is having a hard time because the last time he went over this was when he was nine and he couldn’t afford to focus on school. 

Natasha isn’t having much luck either though and can only name New York, California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. She also says Denmark for some reason which Clint knows for a fact isn’t a state despite her insistence. 

He can only name three others though, Louisiana, Tennessee and Iowa. 

When Natasha asks him why he’d named obscure states he replies that all of them hold some significance with his past. She hesitates before asking what significance.

Clint is surprised she’s trying to get them to share but humors her and responds that Louisiana was where he’d first found a carnival that he ran away with. Natasha accepts that he was in a carnival despite the ridiculousness that comes with the claim. 

As for Tennessee he says that's the first foster home he was put in was. He says he was born and raised for a few years in Iowa.

He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this since he’s usually closed off about what his past was like but he felt he could talk to her. She is dangerous as hell and one of the most untrustworthy people you would meet but Clint feels like they have an understanding. 

He asks her where she was born and she replies that he wouldn’t know it, Clint tells her to try him and she says “Earth”. Clint bursts out laughing, he hasn’t in years and can’t believe that she’s made him. He looks into her eyes and see’s they are twinkling of merriment as well.

A spark of humor is unexpected from an assassin, from people like them but Clint knows that it was a way of directing the question somewhere else.

“Give me a town.” He says after he’s calmed down.

Natasha sighs hardly noticeably and seems to hesitate before she says something in Russian.

“Huh?” he asks.

She repeats the word and at his confused look she says that it’s the name of the town and it’s russian, it’s not going to be easy for an American to say.

Clint rolls his eyes good naturedly and smiles at her.

Afterwards they start having a conversation about colors and their opinions on them.

Clint is thirteen and he is becoming friends with Natasha.

\---

Clint is fourteen and it’s his birthday, for his present from the gang he’s being fucked by every gang member who wants it and he feels empty and kinda like dying. 

Natasha is on a mission and he’ll be going on one the day she gets back. 

Clints is in so much pain and it hurts and damn these people. He tried to escape a week ago when Natasha was gone, planning to pick her up from a rendezvous point he knows her guards will be taking her to and his back still hurts from the whipping he was given. 

Every time one of them moves inside of him and jostles something, his back is on fire. He feels like giving up and he wonders if he’s ever going to get out of this. 

They are laughing cruely and he’s been at this hellhole for almost a year. Out of nowhere there’s a sharp pain on the back of his neck and he wants to scream when he sees somebody is carving into his neck.

“What the hell are you doing?” He shouts because dammit they could kill him and he doesn’t want to die anymore.

“Just marking you for life.” the man behind the knife says.

Marking him for life and it was a sick thing to do. Clint wants to cry because it's his birthday and kids usually get presents and hugs on these days and honestly he’d be fine with his parents rather than the crap that he was in right now.

Clint wonders why everything that’s happening is. Was he really this unlucky? What were the odds that somebody would go through every fucking thing he had?

His fist balls up in its place on the floor. He realizes that if he ever gets out of this he’ll have to wear a collar and fuck these guys for that.

Clint is fourteen when he decides that he’s not going to die here.

\---

Clint is fourteen and he’s standing over the dead body of Alastair Tully, the man who’d been his main tormenter for a year. It’s been eight months since his birthday and him and Tasha are going to get out. 

The man is dead and Clint will make sure that no vengeful gang members will ever find him or Nat again.

His hand is shaking with crimson coating it and he drops the knife in his hand. He feels overwhelmed but that’s stupid with everything that has happened to him so he tries to shake it off. He wipes the blood on the wall and he grabs his bow from the floor and makes sure Nat, who was in the room when he killed Tully, is alright and ready to go. She of course is, and they make their way down the stairs.

Clint and her are cautious of their surroundings and he is wary and she is attentive to every detail. They hurry down the stairs before somebody recognizes them or finds the body. Clint is folding his bow, which is collapsible as they go. 

If he carries it around it’ll draw too much attention to themselves. He wonders again if he’s sure about the next step of their plan but decides it’s him and Tash’s best shot at a normal life.

They make it out the door and they run and run. Clint calls for a taxi and gives the driver a fifty dollar bill from a wallet he stole from Tully.

“Drive to Eugene, Oregon please.” Clint says. 

The driver says he’ll need more money and Clint says he’ll give it to him when they reach the destination, the fifty is a starter.

The driver frowns but agrees and the long car ride starts. 

Clint can’t believe that this is happening and their finally going to be free. Natasha doesn’t seem to be all too adjusted either, he knows that while he’s only been a slave to the gang for about a year she’s been a slave for almost her entire life. He promises that he’ll be there for her and tells the taxi driver to turn off the damn radio and he’ll throw in an extra fifty. 

The driver obliges and a long car ride pursues.

They reach Eugene, Oregon only a few hours later and Clint gives the driver his money and makes sure he’ll keep his mouth shut. Him and Tash then proceed to make their way to the nearest police station after having a quick conversation.

Clint says to the receptionist that his name is Clinton Francis Barton and this is his half-sister Natasha Alianovna Romanoff and they need to check in with CPS services.

The receptionist looks at them oddly and Clint puts an arm around Natasha’s shoulder which she shrugs off.

Clint Barton is fourteen years old and life might just begin again.


End file.
